Bathtub hacks

My four-year-old daughter has always loved the bath. She can easily spend upwards of an hour in the tub, so I'm always looking for ways to enhance the experience (both for her and for me!). One of my biggest peeves is dealing with storage of all of her tub toys. I used to use a plastic bin, but that doesn't breathe at all, and it always gets a gross film on the bottom from standing water. We tried one of those mesh duckie bags that attaches to the tile with suction cups, but it didn't work for us at all. The suction cups never held, and there was not even close to enough space for all of her toys.

The solution was found in the laundry department of my supermarket. This soft, foldable mesh bag allows all water to drain out, and lets her toys dry without gathering mold or mildew. The handles let me hang it on the tub faucet without having to fuss with finicky suction cups.

And a bonus hack!

My other tub tip/hack involves the toys themselves. Sure, my daughter has official tub toys, from musical dolphins to fish with a net, but her favorite tub toys are empty travel-sized shampoo and conditioner containers. She pretends the tub is a beauty salon and fills the bottles with water to "wash" the hair of the aforementioned dolphins, or the dozen naked Barbie Dolls floating around the tub.

Comments

The suction cup net works for me. I also have a bathtub tray that’s pretty handy.

I also have an “improvised” bathtub toy – a couple plastic Crystal Light containers (basically tall plastic cups) for pouring water. My daughter likes to shove her feet into them too (one of these days she’s going to get stuck!)

my big girl will love the squeeze bottle idea, fabulous. i once had a mesh bag, but it wasn’t a good design for little people to get things out! we’ve currently got a lovely blue collander, it drains well. now, if i could just keep squeeze toys from getting yucky *inside*. our best-used

My 2yr old daughter’s current favorite bath toy is a 2 liter soda botter with a few pinholes driller in the bottom of it. She perches it on a corner of the tub, fills it with water, catches the water in another container, pours the water back into the soda bottle, etc, etc.

For extra fun, we’ll put a fizzy colour tab in the bottle before she starts pouring water in it…